


The Baron of the Chalk

by Antosha



Category: Discworld - Terry Pratchett, The Tiffany Aching Series - Terry Pratchett
Genre: Angst and Humor, Baron Roland de Chumsfanleigh, Birthday, Boffo - Freeform, Character Death, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hag of the Hills, Healing, I still ship Tiffany/Roland, Magic, No Feegles, POV Tiffany Aching, Post-Wintersmith, Pre-Het, Second Thoughts, Teachings of Granny Weatherwax, Third Thoughts, Witches, first sight, love and death, witching
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-15
Updated: 2020-06-15
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:47:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24739462
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Antosha/pseuds/Antosha
Summary: The Baron died on Tiffany's sixteenth birthday.
Relationships: Tiffany Aching & Roland de Chumsfanleigh, Tiffany Aching/Roland de Chumsfanleigh
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	The Baron of the Chalk

**Author's Note:**

> I love the Tiffany Aching books. They might be my favorite of the Discworld series — up there with the Moist von Lipwig books, oh, and the Watch books, and of course the Witches books, of which they are an integral part...
> 
> I might even like them more than I like another, seven-book series about the growing up of a young magic user that was coming out at about the same time. And I love that series a lot.
> 
> The Tiffany Aching books are funny and thoughtful, like all of Pratchett's work, but also sensitive and — from a craft point of view — tightly constructed in a way that not all of his books were. You can tell that he had raised a daughter. Miss you, pTerry. :-(
> 
> This story struck me about a year after I read _Wintersmith_ with my own youngest.

The Baron died on Tiffany's sixteenth birthday. 

She wasn't terribly surprised or upset by this. In the first place, it wasn't as if he'd done it on purpose. And in the second, it was exactly the sort of thing that happened.

Tiffany had been at the castle every day for the previous two years—as part of her rounds, of course, between helping to birth babies and lambs, finding lost sheep, setting broken limbs, and occasionally reminding old Trudy Clump where her home was. Helping him to take his pain away—well, not really _away_ , said her Second Thoughts, just outside of his body—was just part of her job. She was the Hag of the Hills, after all.

That she'd actually got to like the old man, that he would tell her stories about her grandmother, that Roland was always there, as alert to her arrival as a good sheepdog to its master or mistress—that was all just a coincidental benefit. Like the wonderful candles you could make when you kept honey bees. It wasn't why she went there. Not at all.

That Roland was looking every day more and more like a person, like a man, like  _himself_ ; that the sight of him smiling when his father told a story about Roland's mother or about Granny Aching made Tiffany's middle go soft and warm—that had nothing to do with anything. Not at all.

_You just keep telling yourself that_ , said her Second Thoughts.

Her Third Thoughts (which couldn't be bothered with sarcasm) said, _It's interesting that the part of your day that gives you the most pleasure is the part you consider to be the least important._

_Oh, shut up,_ Tiffany told both of them.

They didn't listen. They never did.

The fact of the matter was that, as pleasant as the time  was  Tiffany spent in the castle, and as much as she looked forward to it, the magic involved in caring for the Baron—in placing as much of his pain as she could in a spot just beyond his right shoulder, as Granny Weatherwax had taught her to do, and in trying to slow the spread of the disease that was, as nearly as she could tell, eating him from the bones outward—was extremely difficult, taxing work. Mind, hard work was the best work.

All of her Thoughts agreed on that count.

As it was, when Death appeared in the Baron's room just past the Hour of the Drunken Goat on the night of her birthday, Tiffany had worked herself into oblivion. She was fast asleep, her head on the fine coverlet that had probably cost one of the Baron's ancestors more than all of the goods in the Aching's farm would fetch at auction, her mouth open and drooling on the Agatean silk in a way that would have appalled her, had she been awake.

It was Roland's voice that woke her. "Oh. It's you."

GOOD EVENING, ROLAND DE CHUMSFANLEIGH, said a not-there voice that brought Tiffany instantly upright. I AM SURPRISED THAT YOU CAN SEE ME.

"Well, I've been around," said Roland with a shrug so sad and matter-of-fact that it took Tiffany's breath away. 

YOU ARE NOT GOING TO TRY TO FIGHT ME, ARE YOU? NOR MAKE ANY OTHER RIDICULOUS ADOLESCENT MALE ATTEMPT TO DELAY YOUR FATHER'S FATE? YOUNG MEN WITH SWORDS OFTEN DO RATHER SILLY THINGS WHEN I APPEAR TO THEM.

"No," sighed Roland. "I... I'm glad you're here. I mean, I'm sad. But I'm relieved for my dad. It's been hard for him."

YES. IT IS HIS TIME. There was a quiet  _slashing_ not-sound, and suddenly the Baron's raspy breathing, which had served as a kind of rough, irregular timepiece through the last eight hours, simply ceased. GOOD EVENING TO YOU TOO, TIFFANY ACHING.

"It is always a pleasure to see you, sir," said Tiffany, bowing as automatically as squeezing a new cheese. Nanny Ogg had always said that it paid to be pleasant to Death. Then again, Nanny Ogg thought it paid to be pleasant to absolutely everyone—certainly everyone with even the semblance of masculinity. 

I AM QUITE SURE THAT PLEASURE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH IT. Beside the dark, robed figure stood a spirit that looked remarkably like Roland, only with a ruddier complexion, if that were possible.

"Oh, jolly good," said the Baron's ghost. "It's nice not to hurt any more."

" _Father!_ " gasped Roland.

"Ah, yes. Well. Good to see you, son. And thank you, Mistress Aching, for all of your help. I must be off." Unlike some, the ghost seemed positively  _thrilled_ to get on with the next bit.

"Give my love to... Mum..." said Roland, but the spirit had already started to fade.

UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN, TIFFANY ACHING, said Death. Its cowl turned toward Roland. UNTIL WE MEET AGAIN, BARON. 

And then there was only Roland, Tiffany and the old Baron's remains left in the chamber.

Roland's face was slack. His hand rested on his late father's unmoving chest.

Without listening to any of her Thoughts—or perhaps listening to all of them—Tiffany found herself placing her hand on top of his. It was reassuringly warm.

"So... That was Death," said Roland. "I'm surprised that he looked... exactly the way I expected him to."

Tiffany stroked his fingers as if trying to wake a sleeping lamb. "Granny Weatherwax says he looks that way  _because_ we expect him to. Anthropomorphic personification."  _Boffo_ , said her Second Thoughts, which she ignored.

Roland grunted, an acknowledgment, if not necessarily a sign that he'd actually heard her. "'M not really. Baron. There'll be a Baron-regent until I'm twenty-one." He said the words with absolutely no inflection, which wasn't like Roland at all.

"Is that really what you're thinking about?" asked Tiffany, since it was what she asked herself all of the time.

Roland turned his face toward her, and it was like the ocean wave that she had once saved him from: his sorrow rushed up and out and through him, and he was weeping, his head in her lap, holding on to her for sheer warmth as living folk always do in the near presence of Death.

Tiffany may have been a witch, the Hag of the Hills, but she was sure that even Granny Weatherwax wouldn't have disapproved of the fact that, as she sat there, trying to comfort her grieving friend, she too wept. Just a little.

: : 

Some time later, just as the bell in the castle's tower began to chime midnight, Roland sat up, blinked his eyes clear, and said, "Oh. Blast. Happy birthday, Tiffany."

For some reason, that made her weep rather more vehemently, which Tiffany was sure Granny Weatherwax wouldn't have approved of at all, though it would have made Nanny Ogg laugh.

"I... I have... present..." Roland's voice got higher, the way it sometimes did when she embarrassed him.

Usually Tiffany enjoyed it when Roland was embarrassed. But not just then. "Not now," she gasped, grabbing a handkerchief from her bag—since a witch always has that sort of thing handy. "Another time. Please."

"All right," said Roland, and now he was the one stroking her hand.

They sat there for some time, and Tiffany found that she was making a sound rather like a distressed mourning dove.

"There'll be a Reading of the Will," sighed Roland.

"A what?" Tiffany asked.

"A... Don't you remember? When my father became Baron?" He looked at her, and then shook his head. "I always forget you're younger than I am."

"Only in years," said Tiffany.

"Of course," deferred Roland. It was a conversation they'd had before. Roland always deferred. Tiffany somehow never felt as if she had won. She wasn't even sure why she wanted to. "In any case, I was five, so you would have been... little. Barons don't have crowns like kings, or coronets like dukes and such, so there's no... coronation. So I guess the tradition here is that the old Baron's will is read down in the square, and so everyone knows who the new baron is."

"That sounds... interesting." Tiffany tried to make it sound as if she meant it, but she knew she hadn't managed very well.

It didn't matter. Not to Roland, at least. "Not really. And anyway, it'll be naming a regent in any case. He'll get to rule in my stead till I'm of age." Then he winced. "Or  _she_ will. Or...  _they_ will." 

And Tiffany realized that Roland was thinking of his awful, grasping aunts. "But... that's not fair! You're almost nineteen! You're old enough to fight, and old enough to get married—why shouldn't you be old enough to be the Baron?"

He shrugged. "Older witches always seem to get more respect."

"That's because the ones who survive are generally really good," sniffed Tiffany. "And besides, witches don't usually get terribly caught up in  _numbers."_ Certainly Granny Weatherwax didn't. Of course, Tiffany wasn't at all certain that Granny Weatherwax could count past about twenty anyway, where she'd run out of fingers and toes.

Shrugging again, Roland sighed. "It's just the way it is. Till I'm twenty-one, someone else will take care of ruling the Chalk."

"There's not that much ruling involved."

"Not if it's done right. If it's done wrong, there's suddenly a lot of ruling to do. A lot of it at sword-point. At least, that's what Draconius says in  _Laws of Rule_ ."

They both looked down at the old Baron. He'd turned out to do it a lot better than most, according to the folk old enough to have seen several generations of Chumsfanleighs. Tiffany, of course, chalked that up to the influence of her grandmother.

"Tiffany?" asked Roland, very meekly as they looked at the Baron's grey face, which looked, like all dead faces, remarkably relaxed, but not at all like the face of someone sleeping. "Will you come?"

"Come?"

"To the Reading of the Will?" He pinkened. "I mean, I know it won't be terribly interesting, and I know I probably won't even be able—"

"Of course I'll be there, Roland," said Tiffany, resting her other hand on his. "I'm your friend."

"Oh, Good." They both stared down at their hands for a while.

Tiffany kept waiting for one of her Thoughts to think of something, but they were quite suspiciously silent. Finally, when she couldn't take it any more, she went with common sense. "We should inform everyone of your father's death."

"Oh. Yes." Instead of taking his hands away from hers, however, he turned held them tight. "Couldn't we wait? Just... a bit longer?"

Tiffany stared down at their hands again, and then up at him, and her Thoughts had absolutely nothing to say, for which she cursed them silently. She took a breath, let it out... "All right," she said. "Just a bit longer."

**Author's Note:**

> I had thought of writing two or three sequels to this. 
> 
> In the first, we were going to have the Reading of the Will, obviously. Roland's nasty aunts were going to be particularly awful, assuming (as Roland did here) that they were going to be named — individually or jointly — as barons regent. But of course, the old Baron, having learned his lesson from Granny Aching, named the Hag of the Hills as the regent. The aunts went off furious, and Roland and Tiffany were confused and excited about getting even closer... but of course Tiffany's First Sight (and Second Thoughts) made it clear to her that, while she was regent, her relationship with Roland had to remain a professional one.
> 
> In the third story, Roland, with Tiffany's help, would try to establish a watch for the Chalk, separate from the Baron's personal guards. Wee Mad Arthur was to be the commander. I think Daft Wully was going to be his only constable, with maybe Tiffany's younger brother Wentworth. Arthur was going apoplectic, as was his wont, and Roland and Tiffany were pulling their hair out. Mr. Nutt (from Unseen Academicals) was going to wander through.... and whip them into shape? Also, I think he and Glenda were going to advise Roland and Tiffany about finding love wherever you could, First Sight and Second Thoughts notwithstanding.
> 
> And the last story was going to be Roland and Tiffany figuring out how to actually marry the Baron of the Chalk to the Hag of the Hills. After some Crossing of the Arms and Tapping of the Feet, the ceremony was going to be officiated jointly by Jeannie and by Rob Anybody. 
> 
> Before I could write any more, however, _I Shall Wear Midnight_ came out, and blew all of this out of the water. And I loved _I Shall Wear Midnight_ — it and _Snuff_ (see "Excerpts from Pride and Extreme Prejudice" for my response to that book) were the last of his books that I really felt were masterpieces — so I was happy to let this lie. (I love _The Shepherd's Crown_ , but mostly in an elegiac way. I can't separate my sorrow at the author's passing from my response to the book.)
> 
> Still, I'm happy with this piece, a decade later. It reminds me of why I loved these characters.


End file.
